1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and method for forwarding electronic mail (email). Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer program for forwarding emails to a list of previous recipients.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic data communications, particularly electronic mail (email), is increasingly prevalent for both business and personal uses. Email services may be offered to users by Internet service providers (ISPs). Such businesses host a user's email account providing the user with a mailbox and a user interface with which to send and receive emails. For example, an America Online (AOL) customer uses AOL's email reader.
Many people use well known, stand-alone email applications, such as Microsoft Outlook®, Outlook Express®, or Thunderbird® to organize, send, and receive emails. People who subscribe to free email services like Hotmail® or Yahoo® use an email interface that appears in a Web page. Outlook®, Outlook Express®, and Hotmail® are products and trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Thunderbird® is a product and trademark of the Mozilla Corporation.
Most email applications provide functionality that allows a user to reply only to the sender of an email or reply to all recipients of the email including the sender of the email. A common mistake that occurs is a user accidentally replies only to the sender of the email when the user, in fact, intended to send a reply to all recipients of the email including the sender. This is typically done by hitting “reply to” instead of “reply-to-all” and is consistent to all major email platforms. Similarly, a user may intentionally send a reply email only to the sender but later desires to resend the reply email to all recipients originally included on the original email.
Currently, there is no elegant method of forwarding the replied email to all recipients initially included on the original email. The user may go back to the original email, hit reply-to-all and paste in the replied text. The problem with this solution is that the original sender receives duplicate replies causing confusion. Furthermore, the original sender may have already responded to the reply.
Alternatively, the user may manually forward the replied email and paste in the other individuals as recipients. The problem with this solution is that the original sender is left off of the recipient list. Thus, the original sender will not receive any replies to the forwarded email if a recipient of the forwarded email sends a reply-to-all response. Furthermore, if the original sender responds to the replied email, the other recipients do not receive the response email.
Accordingly, the illustrative embodiments of the present invention recognize the problems presented above and provide a solution.